Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Austrian field bakery and bakery wagon (yellow) constructed by Ed Phillips. Town and roads were made by Herb Gundt. Front Rank civilians work at the bakery.

Yesterday we set up my Winter terrain in my basement and staged a scenario involving a Prussian raid on an Austrian field bakery, somewhere in Silesia, possibly at the village of Born, which lies in front of the Austrian battle line at Leuthen. We had gotten about twelve inches of snow over the Christmas weekend so it seemed like an appropriate thing to set up a winter game. Bill Protz, Randy Frye and Keith Leidy joined me in this little skirmish game.

I wanted to do a BAR rules game in a skirmish or small action with just a few troops. The actual table was 6ft by 17ft, so hopefully this would give us plenty of room for maneuvering troops. The opposing forces are shown below:

Field bakeries were often set up ahead of the arrival of the army. The engineers would lay out the boundaries of the army encampment, a day or two before the army actually arrived on site. At the same time, the traveling field bakeries were set up so that they could commence the production of bread to feed the army. So one can imagine that the field bakeries might have been vulnerable to a quick raid by the enemy. If the bakery were destroyed ahead of the army's arrival into camp, that could put a serious crimp on the supply of the army.

Here is an overview of the table, showing the Austrian right flank in the foreground, the village of Borne in the center background, and the Austrian left flank near the windmill hill.

The Prussian players were given a handful of yellow cards and instructed to write the name of each unit under their command on a card. They were given several spare cards to be used as "dummy cards" with no unit on it to provide some disinformation or fog of war for the Austrians. The Prussians began the game by setting their cards on the table in lieu of their actual figures. The Austrian players could only guess as to what units might be listed on the cards. So they had no idea of the forces that were descending upon the town of Born.

The Prussians were given two free moves to start the game so that they could maneuver and sneak up on the town's garrison. On Turn 3, the Austrian players had a 50% chance of activating their units with a D6 die roll (odd number - they don't activate; even number - they do activate). In the event that a Prussian unit moved within 16" of an Austrian unit, then the Austrian unit could automatically activate.

Prussian jager surge over the hill and begin to engage the Croats and Austrian jagers that were guarding the left flank of the table. You can see that some of the Austrians are dug into wolf pits for added protection.

Prussian Zieten Hussars attack part of the Austrian camp and zero in on the Austrian artillery battery, hoping to take it out before it can fire and do any damage to the attackers.

Prussian musketeers (IR19 Margraf Karl) attack the other portion of the Austrian camp. The Austrian infantry have just been activated and are considered disordered until they have time to form up.

It was a bad day for the Austrian artillery as the Zieten Hussars (Stadden figures) cut down the Austrian crew manning the guns in front of the tent encampment in the center of the table.

Von Kleist captures the town of Borne and sets up a battery of 6pdrs to control the approaches to the town, in case the Austrians counter-attack. They did not.

Saxon von Bruhl cavalry arrive on the Austrian right flank and attempt to push back the von Ruesch or Black Hussars.

I think that we played about seven or eight turns, including the first two turns where only the Prussians were allowed to move. At the end of Turn 8, the von Kleist Kroats had captured the village and were preparing to blow up the field bakery. The two tent camps had been over run by Prussian infantry and the tents were set on fire. Clearly, the Prussians had achieved all of their objectives and were declared the winners.

This scenario shows that Batailles de l'Ancien Regime (or "BAR" for short) work well for smaller scale raids and skirmish level games. The scenario would probably have worked well had I deducted one more battalion of infantry from each side's forces. Each player could be assigned a command of one battalion of infantry, 2-3 squadrons of light cavalry, and a battery of light artillery if you wish to reduce the roster of troops even more.

I might want to tinker with the rules for activating the Austrian infantry forces. They nearly waited too long to activate, as the Prussian infantry was nearly in their camp before they could get started. That is sort of the effect that I wanted to achieve. The Austrians did benefit from a nice run of cards that gave them the initiative on most of the turns after Turn 3.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

We had a very nice Christmas here in Hesse Seewald. You can see a picture of our Yule Tree after the Princess has sorted out all of her packages and stashed them off-camera for quicker opening. She has package opening down to a science.

I received some nice books including Adrian Goldsworthy's How Rome Fell and Don Troiani's book Soldiers of the American Revolution to stoke my wargaming interests even further. The Goldworthy book has proven to be very interesting as I can hardly put the thing down after skimming a few sections here and there. The Troiani book will be most helpful once I start painting our new Fife & Drum AWI figures in early 2011.

The Princess got the laptop computer that she had been saving for over the past year. She was a few dollars short of having enough funds to make the purchase, so we bought it for her using her own funds, supplemented with some of our own cash. Now the Princess has a better computer than we do. The Wife received an iPad from me so it was quite a "tech-y day" for the household this Christmas day. One good thing about this is that now I can access our family computer and do more blogging without having to surrender my time to the other family members. That is a definite win-win outcome.

Later in the afternoon, we filled Mallard Hall with fourteen guests and relatives and had a grand old time. It was very cold and snowy outside, but I kept the fireplace stoked with logs all day and it was very comfortable sitting near the fire and reading bits of Goldsworthy.

Friday, December 24, 2010

The Erbprinz Friedrich, Princezin Katherine, and the Hesse Seewald General Staff wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy 1761. (click or double click picture to enlarge)

The Erbprinz Friedrich of Hesse Seewald assembled his general staff for a portrait drawing to celebrate Christmas and the coming new year. The Erbprinz thanks all of the visitors to his realm, over the past year, and wishes all of his friends and followers a very merry Christmas and a happy new year in 1761.

The ducal terrain was constructed by that renowned architect, Herb "Capability" Gundt. The Erbprinz and Princezin were outfitted by Mr. Suren, the hussar general von Zieten by Mr. Stadden, and everyone else by Mr. Morbey (save for the splendid ADC in the red coat, via the Foundry). The Bosniaks in the background, on escort duty, are Crusader figures on Ebob horses.

Sunday, December 19, 2010

Yesterday, December 18th, I celebrated the passing of another birthday, my 58th one on this planet. I had hoped to get in a little bit of painting time, but with errands, Christmas shopping and waiting for the heating repairman to put in a new humidifier in the basement (lots of banging of sheet metal just a few feet away from my painting table), events seemed to conspire against me and I didn't get much time at the painting table.

I did finish off two more stands of Minden Austrian grenadiers, bringing my converged battalion up to 24 figures (2 stands of red-facing figures, 2-stands of blue-facing figures). I am working on two more stands of 6 figures in pink or rose facings to represent the Regiment de Ligne. I hope to have them completed within a couple more days.

Deliveries from the UK to the USA seem to be all discombobulated lately. I have three different orders posted to me in November and 3-4 weeks later there have been no pleasant surprises in my mail box, much to my regret. My understanding is that the Royal Mail got all backed up with the snow-related delays, and then add in the usual deluge of Christmas mail, and you have a recipe for extremely slow delivery. I am resigned to not seeing anything for a couple more weeks - if we get into mid January with nothing, then I might start to get concerned.

The weather has been very cold here in Hesse Seewald, staying between 10 to 20 degrees Fahrenheit, versus the average temperature of about 35 degrees F for this time of year. We decided to make lemonade out of lemons, weather wise, and headed down the street to a steep slope, where we (the Princess and Mrs. Fritz) did a little bit of downhill sledding. It was more like getting on a luge run, with our little sled and icy surface, but we had fun, and then afterwards, made some hot cocoa and sat by a roaring fire in the fireplace. Not a bad way to tackle a cold winter day.

Sunday, December 12, 2010

Minden Austrians painted in 2009. Not the grenadiers, but close enough.

What does one do on a cold dreary winter day when the weather outside is frightful, and one's football team is decidedly not delightful? Why you retreat to the painting table in the basement, put a Mozart CD on the player, and break out some Minden SYW figures to paint.

I had hoped to settle in on my cosy sofa, next to the warm fire in the fireplace, and watch the Chicago Bears play the evil New England Patriots. Alas, it was not to be as the score was 33-0 in favor of the Bad Guys at halftime. Now Der Alte Fritz didn't get to be Alte without learning a thing or two, so he gave up on the football game and pitched into 12 Austrian grenadiers that he needed to complete a 24-figure battalion of converged grenadiers. I think that I might also prime another 6 or 12 grenadiers this evening so that I can increase the grenadier battalion to at least 30 figures, which would be on par with the size of my other battalions.

It occurred to me that I am running out of time if I wish to have my Minden Project Austrian and Prussian armies ready for their debut at this coming year's Seven Years War Association convention, circa March 28-30, 2011 in South Bend, Indiana. The Prussians are ready for battle with 9 battalions of infantry, four spendid Berlin Zinnfiguren 12-pounders and crew, and a regiment of dragoons and hussars.

The Austrians, so far, only have 3 battalions of Mindens (but I have 2 of my old RSM battalions available if I rebase them) and 4 BZ artillery pieces and crew. I will have to use my old RSM Austrian cavalry as stand ins until I can get some Minden Austrian cavalry painted, later in 2011. Assuming that I can paint 60 infantry figures per month, that would two battalions of 30 (or one regiment) that I have to finish in January and another two battalions to complete in February. YIKES! That is cutting the time line a little too close for comfort.

Hmm, I can see that there is still much work to be done and no doubt I will be distracted and diverted from the SYW project once the Fife & Drum AWI figures start coming out of the production moulds in January.

Friday, December 10, 2010

I forgot to post these pictures of the British Light Company officer from our new Fife & Drum Miniatures range of AWI figures. I'm afraid that he got lost in all of the excitement last week with the arrival of the American Militia greens.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Here are pictures of four more of the American Militia greens that Richard Ansell sent to me the other day. As before, there is a nice mix of tricorne and floppy hats and blanket roll styles (tumpline on the back or worn across the shoulder).

250,000 Visitors!

Probably some time on Saturday or Sunday, we will have passed the 250,000 visitor milestone on the Der Alte Fritz Journal. We were about 500 hits short of that number at 7PM this evening. Thank you to everyone for your support of my blog - your comments and enthusiasm for what I do keeps me going.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

I received photos of the first eight American Militia poses from Richard Ansell today and I have to say that once again, his work continues to amaze me. I love the facial expression on the officer in the picture above and his pose is very handy to use in a number of vignettes that have popped into my mind. Today's posting will feature four of the greens and then I will post the next four on friday evening, so that no one gets the vapors from all of the excitement. I know that they have that effect on me.

We also decided on a name for our venture: Fife & Drum Miniatures. The name evokes the American Revolution (think about the famous "Spirit of '76" painting) as well as "horse and musket" historical periods in general. I would imagine that one day, after we get the AWI range completed, we might be interested in adding other historical eras to the range.

The fellow in the next picture below is shown in a floppy brimmed hat, but at the last minute, I asked Richard to change his headgear to a tricorne hat so that we would have four greens in tricornes and four in floppy hats. After looking at these militia figures, I have to say that I am tempted to add some Butler's Rangers and Iroquois warriors so that our figures could be used for skirmish games on the New York frontier.

American Militia at the ready - we changed his headgear to a tricorne though

American Militia in tricorne hats - standing firing

American Militia in hats - kneeling firing

The final two sets of pictures depict a militia man standing firing and kneeling firing. I think that Richard does an excellent job of providing such a natural looking pose for both of the firing figures. In fact, his firing figure poses are often my favorites in his other ranges.

Tomorrow's posting of pictures will include militia advancing (tricorne), militia advancing (hat, but a different pose than the tricorne version), another standing firing (but in hat) and a fellow cocking the musket (wearing hat). I also have two more British light infantry men to show you.